I am a Microsoft C# MVP, author, speaker, blogger, developer, and creator of WP Requests and WinStore Requests.
I've been involved with computers in one way or another for as long as I can remember, but started professionally in 1993. Although my primary focus right now is commercial software applications, I prefer building infrastructure components, reusable shared libraries and helping companies define, develop and automate process and code standards and guidelines.

Phil has an excellent post that builds on Jeff Atwood’s explanation which very clearly describes the differences between the various release types: Beta CTP Daily Builds/Interim Releases Fully Supported Out-of-Band Releases RTM/RTW Releases Service Pack Releases Summarizing what both Phil and Jeff said: Alpha: The software is complete enough for internal testing. This is typically done by people other than the software engineers who wrote it, but still within the same organization or community that ......

If you’re looking at implementing Team Foundation Server, looking for ways to improve your deployment, or just want to know how one of the world’s largest software companies manages their day-to-day development, check out this “series” of blog posts. These are good posts from a management/process level perspective: Applying Value Up at Microsoft (Sam Guckenheimer) 60-minute-webcast Scenarios, Value Props, Experiences, Features Managing work for Team System (Jeff Beehler) Internal TFS Usage: Tracking ......

Not too long ago I mentioned that StyleCop 4.3 had been released and that the SDK documentation would be out shortly. The wait is over and the SDK documentation is now available. The documentation covers the following sections: Writing Custom Rules for StyleCop Integrating StyleCop into Build Environments StyleCop API Reference I’m looking forward to finding some time to sit down with the SDK and see what kind of custom rules I can write. Technorati Tags: StyleCop ......

If you want to help provide feedback for the next big features at CodePlex and will be in Redmond (Seattle) between September 16 – 19, be sure to contact the CodePlex team to participate in some usability studies. Be sure to include your: Name CodePlex username (if you have one) Phone number where we can contact you to schedule a time. I would love to participate as I have a few projects on CodePlex and spent a great deal of time talking with the team at this years MVP Summit, but unfortunately I’m ......

I have always been a huge fan of FxCop, especially FxCop 1.36 even though it was a beta release for a long time. I’m happy to say (a bit late) that FxCop 1.36 has finally been released. Some of the improvements are: 200+ bug fixes that reduce noise, missing analysis and rule crashes Support for analyzing anonymous methods and lambda expressions New option for skipping analysis over tool generated code Spell checker libraries now ship in the box Changes in the way references are resolved and located ......

Jeff Atwood talks about what he considers the “Golden Rule” of source control: Check in early, check in often. For Jeff, it seems, going more than 1 day without checking in code is too long and will cause integration headaches down the road. I completely agree with this sentiment, and the idea of not going dark, up to a point. Where Jeff's arguments start to fail is long-running development tasks that have large (or fundamental) impact on an existing code-base, particularly one that is heavily used. ......

Axialis Software and Microsoft worked to create a free Visual Studio add-in to create an icon editing tool that allows you to create high-quality 256x256 PNG-compressed icons for Windows Vista. The editing experience, both inside and outside Visual Studio, is very easy to use and provides various tools, filters, and effects, as well as the ability to create icons from existing images or ready-to-use image objects. *IMPORTANT: Axialis IconWorkshop™ Lite installs ONLY if Visual Studio® 2008 Professional ......

Earlier this month Charlie Calvert introduced a potential new feature called Document Map Margins (DMM). The idea behind DMM is to make it easier for you to find and track important features in your code by visualizing the entire file. Overall I like the idea of DMM as it can really provide you with good contextual information, particularly for really large files. While DMM isn’t here now, a very similar tool is. I came across this tool mentioned by ScottHa in this post. What RockScroll does is to ......

There are always a lot of posts about various add-ins, code snippets, macros, and other utilities that are designed to make you, the developer, more productive within Visual Studio as an editing environment. However, there seem to very few posts that talk about how to actually improve the performance of Visual Studio itself. Browsing through some of the questions on Stack Overflow, I came across a thread asking this very question. There were a lot of non-answers, but one that definitively listed ......

Just a reminder that the Tampa Bay IASA August meeting is tonight starting at 6:30 PM. Web Service Software Factory Modeling Edition The Web Service Software Factory (WSSF) Modeling Edition focuses on building the server side of a web services infrastructure, using either ASMX or WCF services. The new release uses three Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) to model services: service contract, data contract and host models. Through use of these DSLs, WSSF helps developers construct a scalable, extensible ......

For those of you attending the Jacksonville Code Camp 2008, the presentations for my sessions are available on my public Windows Live SkyDrive folder. My sessions are: Memory Management Fundamentals – IDisposable and the Dispose Pattern 8:30 AM– 9:30 AM Code Styles & Standards (Open Space/Chalk Talk) 9:40 AM – 10:40 AM Memory Management Fundamentals – Garbage Collection Deep Dive 2:15 PM – 3:15 PM Unfortunately, it looks like most of the sessions that I want to see are at the same time as mine, ......

Even with the newest releases of StyleCop, FxCop, and Visual Studio 2008, there is still a lot of room for improvement in the suite of technologies and products that make up what should probably be termed “Microsoft Source Analysis”. I know that calling StyleCop that name caused a lot of confusion since it was being compared to the built-in source analysis features of Visual Studio (at least the Team Edition SKUs of Visual Studio). I think the real heart of the problem is that Visual Studio comes ......

A while ago I talked about a new tool from Microsoft called StyleCop. Since then, there was a lot of confusion surrounding the tool and it has undergone a lot of changes both internally and externally. Both Jason and Brian do an excellent job explaining the context behind some of the discussions and decisions leading up to these changes, but the biggest one is that the tool has been officially renamed as “StyleCop” to prevent any confusion with the built-in Visual Studio Code Analysis packages. I’m ......

For any one who is going to the Jacksonville Code Camp 2008 (Jax Code Camp IV) and is traveling be sure to keep an eye on the weather and on tropical storm Fay. It is supposed to be hitting Florida as early as Tuesday, but the forecasts don’t yet know exactly where. If you book a hotel through Hotwire (the only 4-star listed on Hotwire for downtown Jacksonville is the Hyatt) be sure to purchase the travel protection (it’s only about $8) since it covers natural events like hurricanes. Otherwise, you ......

Another Florida Code Camp, this time in Southwest Florida (which is the Naples area). This is the first code camp for Southwest Florida, so be sure to register. When you register, you can sign up as a speaker as well if you want to get more involved in the community…speaking at Code Camp is a great way to get started as a speaker. I’ll be there speaking and possibly attending some sessions as well, depending on when things get scheduled. Here are the details: When: September 13, 2008 - 8:00am to ......

Phil just announced that Subtext 2.0 is finally out. I haven’t been very active on this release (sorry guys!) but with the plans for 3.0 starting up I will be getting back into things a bit more. The new 2.0 release looks really good and includes some new features and bug fixes that will be nice to have. Now, we just need to convince Jeff and company to upgrade. Some of the improvements are: Enhanced MetaWeblog and WordPress API implementations New CSS-based admin section The ability to set a separate ......

Web Service Software Factory Modeling Edition The Web Service Software Factory (WSSF) Modeling Edition focuses on building the server side of a web services infrastructure, using either ASMX or WCF services. The new release uses three Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) to model services: service contract, data contract and host models. Through use of these DSLs, WSSF helps developers construct a scalable, extensible web service framework from the service interfaces to the translation of domain data ......